This pair of cups and saucers is from the Smithsonian’s Hans Syz Collection of Meissen Porcelain. Dr. Syz (1894-1991) began his collection in the early years of World War II, when he purchased eighteenth-century Meissen table wares from the Art Exchange run by the New York dealer Adolf Beckhardt (1889-1962). Dr. Syz, a Swiss immigrant to the United States, collected Meissen porcelain while engaged in a professional career in psychiatry and the research of human behavior. He believed that cultural artifacts have an important role to play in enhancing our awareness and understanding of human creativity and its communication among peoples. His collection grew to represent this conviction.

The invention of Meissen porcelain, declared over three hundred years ago early in 1709, was a collective achievement that represents an early modern precursor to industrial chemistry and materials science. The porcelains we see in our museum collections, made in the small town of Meissen in the German States, were the result of an intense period of empirical research. Generally associated with artistic achievement of a high order, Meissen porcelain was also a technological achievement in the development of inorganic, non-metallic materials.

In the work of French artist Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) we see the development of the fêtes galantes based on the outdoor entertainments in private and public pleasure parks that represent youthful elite society removed from the conventions of court protocol. Watteau’s works depicted conversational, theatrical, and amorous encounters set in idealized pastoral surroundings where the fleeting nature of temporal pleasures hangs over the delicately poised gatherings, and they struck a chord with living protagonists.

In the early 1740s the manufactory began to acquire a collection of copperplate engravings on which the Meissen painters based their Watteauszenen (Watteau scenes), and they became so much in demand that eleven enamel painters were appointed to specialize in these subjects. In this example figures like those seen in the work of Watteau and his followers dance or play musical instruments framed by cartouches of foliage and trellis work.

The figure on the saucer (207 Aab) of a solitary man playing a guitar can be seen on another item in the Hans Syz Collection, a coffeepot (ID number 1983.0565.46), but there the man is not alone, and stands serenading a seated woman in a parkland setting. The subject has its origins in a painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) titled L’Enchanteur in which the young man playing a guitar serenades and attempts to engage the interest of two women seated in a park while another male figure stands in the shadows behind them. The subject was engraved by Benoît Audran II (1698-1772). There is a Meissen saucer with the same subject in the collection of Constance I. and Ralph H. Wark at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida. See Ulrich Pietsch, Early Meissen Porcelain: The Wark Collection from the Cummer Museum and Art Gallery (The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens and D.Giles Ltd: Jacksonville FL and London UK, 2011) p.415.

The Meissen manufactory operated under a system of division of labor. Enamel painters specializing in landscapes, with staffage (figures and animals) and Watteau scenes were paid more than those who painted flowers, fruits and underglaze blue patterns. Most painters received pay by the piece rather than a regular wage or salary. Ornamental gold painting was the work of another specialist in the painting division.

On Antoine Watteau see Thomas Crow, 1985, Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris, chapter II, ‘Fêtes Galantes and Fêtes Publiques’, pp. 55-75. See also Sheriff, M. D., (ed.) 2006, Antoine Watteau: Perspectives on the Artist and the Culture of His Time.

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